Ettie had ventured out of New York state only three times for brief trips, two of them funerals of kin in North Carolina. Ettie had been a star student in her first two years of high school but dropped out to work and try to become a cabaret singer. She’s performed for some years, always opening for better-known talent. Mostly in Harlem or the Bronx, though occasionally she’d land a job on Swing Street – Fifty-Second. Pellam had heard some old wire recordings transcribed onto tape and was impressed with her low voice. For years she’d worked odd jobs, supporting herself and sometimes lovers, while resisting the inevitable proposals of marriage that a beautiful woman living alone in Hell’s Kitchen was flooded with. She finally married, late and incongruously: her husband was an Irishman named Billy Doyle.

A handsome, restless man, Doyle left her years ago, after only three years of marriage.

“He was just doing what a man does, my Billy. They got that runaway spirit. May be their nature but it’s hard to forgive ’em for it. Wonder if you’ve got it too, John.”

Sitting beside the camera as he’d recorded this, Pellam had nodded encouragingly and reminded himself to edit out her last sentence and her accompanying chuckle.

Her second husband was Harold Washington, who drowned, drunk, in the Hudson River.

“No love lost there. But he was dependable with the money and never cheated and never raised his voice to me. Sometimes I miss him. If I remember to think about him.”

Ettie’s youngest son, Frank, had been caught in a cross fire and killed by a man wearing a purple top hat in a drunken shoot-out in Times Square. Her daughter, Elizabeth, of whom Ettie was immensely proud, was a real estate saleswoman in Miami. In a year or two, Ettie would be moving to Florida to live near her. Her oldest son, James – a handsome mulatto – was the only child she had by Doyle. He too caught the wanderlust flu and disappeared out west – California, Ettie assumed. She hadn’t heard from him in twelve years.

The elderly woman had been, in her youth, sultry and beautiful if somewhat imperious (as evidenced by a hundred photos, all presently burned to gray ash) and was now handsome woman with youthful, dark skin. She debated often about dying her salt-and-pepper hair back to its original black. Ettie talked like a quick, mid-Atlantic Southerner, drank bad wine and cooked delicious tripe with bacon and onions. And she could unreel stories about her own past and about her mother and grandmother like a natural actress, as if God gave her that gift to make up for others denied.

And what would happen to her now?

With a jolt the cab burst across Eighth Avenue, the Maginot Line bordering Hell’s Kitchen.

Pellam glanced out the window as they passed storefront, in whose window the word Bakery was painted over, replaced by: Youth Outreach Center – Clinton Branch.

Clinton.

This was a raw spot with longtime residents. The neighborhood to them was “Hell’s Kitchen” and would never be anything but. “Clinton” was what the city officials and public relations and real estate people called the ’hood. As if a name change could convince the public this part of town wasn’t a morass of tenements and gangs and smokey bodegas and hookers and pebbles of crack vials littering sidewalks but was the New Frontier for corporate headquarters and yuppie lofts.

Remembering Ettie’s voice: “You hear the story how this place got its name? The one they tell is a policeman down here, a long time ago, he says to another cop, ‘This place is hell.’ And the other one goes, ‘Hell’s mild compared to here. This’s hell’s kitchen.’ That’s the story, but that’s not how it happened. No sir. Where the name came from was it’s called after this place in London. What else in New York? Even the name of the neighborhood’s stolen from someplace else.”

“Look I am saying,” the cabbie broke into Pellam’s thoughts. “Same fucking thing fucking yesterday. And for weeks.”

He was gesturing furiously at a traffic jam ahead of them. It seemed to be caused by the construction work going on across from the site of the fire – that high-rise nearing completion. Cement trucks pulled in and out through a chain-link gate, holding up traffic.

“That building. I am wanting them to go fuck themselves. It has ruins fucking neighborhood. All of it.” He slapped the dashboard hard, nearly knocking over his royal orb air freshener.

Pellam paid and climbed out of the cab, leaving the driver to his muttered curses. He walked toward the Hudson River.

He passed dark, woody storefronts – Vinnie’s Fruits and Vegetables, Managro’s Deli, Cuzin’s Meats and Provisions, whose front window was filled with whole dressed animals. Booths of clothing and wooden stands filled with piles of spices and herbs packed the side-walks. A store selling African goods advertised a sale on ukpor and ogbono. “Buy now!” it urged.

Pellam passed Ninth Avenue and continued on to Tenth. He passed the shell of Ettie’s building, floating in a surreal grove of faint smoke, and continued on toward a scabby six-story, red-brick building on the corner.

He paused in front of the handwritten sign in the grimy window of a ground floor apartment.

Louis Bailey, Esq. Attorney at Law/Abogado. Criminal, Civil, Wills, Divorces, Personal Injuries. Motorcycle Accidents. Real Estate. Notary Public. Copies Made. Send Your Fax.

Two window panes were missing. Yellow newspaper had replaced one. The other was blocked by a faded box of Post Toasties. Pellam stared at the decrepit building then checked to make sure he had the name right. He did.

Send your fax…

He pushed inside.

There was no waiting room, just a single large room of an apartment converted into an office. The place was jam-packed with papers, briefs, books, some bulky, antiquated office equipment – a dusty, feeble computer and a fax machine. A hundred law books, some of which were still sealed in their original, yellowing cellophane wrappers.

A sign proclaimed NOTARY PUBLIC.

The lawyer stood at his copier, feeding pages of legal documents through the wobbly machine. Hot sun came through the filthy windows; the room must have been a hundred degrees.

“You Bailey?”

His sweaty face turned. Nodded.

“I’m John Pellam.”

“Ettie’s friend. The writer.”

“Filmmaker.” They shook hands.

The portly man touched his coif of long gray hair, which was thinning reluctantly. He wore a white shirt and wide, emerald-colored tie. His gray suit was one size off in both directions – the pants too big, the jacket too small.

“I’d like to talk to you about her case,” Pellam said.

“It’s too hot in here.” Bailey stacked the copied papers on the desk and wiped his forehead. “The A.C.’s misbehaving. How about we retire to my other office? I’ve got a branch up the street.”

Another branch? Pellam thought. And said, “Lead the way.”

Louis Bailey waved toward the doughy woman bartender. He said nothing to her but she waddled off to fix what must have been the lawyer’s usual. In a brogue she called to Pellam, “Whatcha want?”

“Coffee.”

“Irish?”

“Folgers,” he replied.

“I meant with whisky?”

“I meant without.”

Bailey continued. “So. The scans came back negative. The MRI or whatever. She’ll be fine. They’ve moved her to Women’s Detention Center.”

“I tried to visit her yesterday. They wouldn’t let me. Lomax, that fire marshal, wasn’t much help.”

“They usually aren’t. If you’re on our side of the fence.”

Pellam said, “I finally found a cop who told me she’d hired you.”

With an awkward squeak the door opened and two dark-suited young men entered, looked around with dismay and left. Bailey’s uptown office – the abysmal Emerald Isle Pub – was not the sort of place for a business brunch.